The Trial Before Pilate

185:4.1When Herod An­tipas stopped in Je­ru­sa­lem, he dwelt in the old Mac­cabean palace of Herod the Great, and it was to this home of the for­mer king that Je­sus was now taken by the tem­ple guards, and he was fol­lowed by his ac­cusers and an in­creas­ing mul­ti­tude. Herod had long heard of Je­sus, and he was very cu­ri­ous about him. When the Son of Man stood be­fore him, on this Fri­day morn­ing, the wicked Idumean never for one mo­ment re­called the lad of for­mer years who had ap­peared be­fore him in Sep­pho­ris plead­ing for a just de­ci­sion re­gard­ing the money due his fa­ther, who had been ac­ci­den­tally killed while at work on one of the pub­lic build­ings. As far as Herod knew, he had never seen Je­sus, al­though he had wor­ried a great deal about him when his work had been cen­tered in Gal­i­lee. Now that he was in cus­tody of Pi­late and the Judeans, Herod was de­sirous of see­ing him, feel­ing se­cure against any trou­ble from him in the fu­ture. Herod had heard much about the mir­a­cles wrought by Je­sus, and he re­ally hoped to see him do some won­der.

185:4.2When they brought Je­sus be­fore Herod, the tetrarch was star­tled by his stately ap­pear­ance and the calm com­po­sure of his coun­te­nance. For some fif­teen min­utes Herod asked Je­sus ques­tions, but the Mas­ter would not an­swer. Herod taunted and dared him to per­form a mir­a­cle, but Je­sus would not re­ply to his many in­quiries or re­spond to his taunts.

185:4.3Then Herod turned to the chief priests and the Sad­ducees and, giv­ing ear to their ac­cu­sa­tions, heard all and more than Pi­late had lis­tened to re­gard­ing the al­leged evil do­ings of the Son of Man. Fi­nally, be­ing con­vinced that Je­sus would nei­ther talk nor per­form a won­der for him, Herod, af­ter mak­ing fun of him for a time, ar­rayed him in an old pur­ple royal robe and sent him back to Pi­late. Herod knew he had no ju­ris­dic­tion over Je­sus in Judea. Though he was glad to be­lieve that he was fi­nally to be rid of Je­sus in Gal­i­lee, he was thank­ful that it was Pi­late who had the re­spon­si­bil­ity of putting him to death. Herod never had fully re­cov­ered from the fear that cursed him as a re­sult of killing John the Bap­tist. Herod had at cer­tain times even feared that Je­sus was John risen from the dead. Now he was re­lieved of that fear since he ob­served that Je­sus was a very dif­fer­ent sort of per­son from the out­spo­ken and fiery prophet who dared to ex­pose and de­nounce his pri­vate life.